Wipro ePeripherals (WeP), the Rs 240 crore peripherals vendor, has identified two new areas of growth. The company will venture into storage and data communication in addition to its existing printer business. While WeP’s data communication products are just being launched across the metros, the immediate focus will be on storage.

WeP has been selling storage solutions from HP since 1996 to companies like Hindustan Lever and Smithkline Beecham and has about 450 installations across the country. P P R Rao, director, WeP, says, “Earlier there were drawbacks in the design and technology of storage solutions. The technology was based on belt and pulley which increased the maintenance cost. Now however, newer technologies from Hexabyte and Qualstar are more reliable as they increase media utilisation by 90 percent. Also, these vendors have a better roadmap for their products.”

To give its storage business a further boost, WeP has entered into alliances with three storage vendors recently Qualstar, Hexabyte and Network Appliance (NetApp). Qualstar and Hexabyte provide automated tape libraries while the NetApp alliance will help WeP to address the NAS solution market.

“We already got quite a few wins with KPMG and the Delhi Police for Qualstar’s tape solutions, while Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Siemens are deploying Hexabyte’s solution. We also have five NAS installations at KPMG, BNP Paribas, Nokia, British Gas and Filmanic Aromatic,” says Rao.

“Our go-to-market strategy will be to sell the storage solutions using a value addition proposition through our channel partners. Currently we have 39 regional system integrators (SIs) and we plan to add a hundred more this year. We will be providing professional services in solution architecting, spares and logistics and training to our channels. In addition, we will be focusing on upcountry markets like Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Bhopal and Vizag. Companies in these cities are willing to pay premium charges for services,” adds Rao. The company is expecting to rake in revenues of about a million dollars from its storage business this year.

WeP is gung-ho about its NAS installations in the country. Rao says, “There are plenty of Gigabit Ethernet deployments happening and end customers can utilise it fully by implementing NAS, which will not only protect their investment but is also highly scalable. In the next two quarters, we will double our NAS installations from the five we have at present.” WeP is not planning to focus on SAN for now, citing the high procurement costs and complexity of SAN solutions as the reason for staying away.